The Story of Reclaiming the Visionary

TLDR; RTV began as consulting business (unintentionally) catering to neurodiverse small business owners. Through diving into how to better support these remarkably passionate and intense folks, I discovered my own neurodiverse typing along the way: adult PDA.

RTV begin as a consulting practice for small business owners who had big visions and passion for their work...and as a consequence struggled to keep themselves creative and resilient in the face of late stage capitalism.

My work focused on providing alternatives to entrepreneur culture and all the toxic positivity and grind messaging that was (and still is) deeply embedded in those spaces. The core approach was to holistically support the person behind the business and center their coherence, wellbeing and connection to their vision.

Many clients had the core commonality of not just wanting to create their own business, but also needing to out of a drive for autonomy. They required some form of ethical control and oversight over their time and energy, almost always directly on the heels of a burnout, breaking point, crisis, trauma, illness, workplace betrayal, or prolonged experience of exploitation that all but forced them halt their old career pathway and start over completely. After being freed from (or in the process of freeing themselves from) the wreckage, they unlocked their desire to make an impact larger or more profound than anything they could do before.

It really turned out that this was a unique subset of folks, and supporting them was a completely different journey. Some of the characteristics were:

Connecting the dots between loss of autonomy in multiple domains in their life and choosing to engage these areas rather than compartmentalize
Needing a different kind of organizational support that was closer to filling skill gaps, providing tutorials and body doubling during challenging/fraught activities than more traditional business services
There was a prominent need for constant fluidity and flexibility. Often accountability and discipline came up as topics, and the struggle of having messaging around these two concepts continually present but never working as long term.
Brittleness in the face of regiment, routine, and demand, particularly pointless or performative demands.
Priority of integrity over all else (including and sometimes especially profit)
Their work almost always involve some social change component and a awareness sense of

All of these qualities and challenges resonated because they also described me. Compiling the above observations and through lines was as much a personal investigation as it was as an investment in being a better guide and support. It was my role to identify these elements at play, build support strategies and organizational tools that were able to withstand the need for flexibility and responsiveness, and carving space for people to connect to the visions that inspired them, even when it things get crunchy. I loved the process of discovery and documenting the kinds of techniques that worked, when so much other advice and instruction out there didn't. It was also fabulous fostering not only working relationships but lifelong friendships.

I needed some kind of way to map out what the personal and interactional landscape looked like for this population. I don't (and wouldn't, and couldn't) diagnose somebody, but I find that resources built under differently labelled umbrellas are important to explore and learn from to increase our range of what we expect, what kinds of patterns we can prepare for, and what the limits of our service should be.

The psychological and social dynamics I already had a little bit of a personal background in -- I was one of the very many 'failed gifted' kids/teens. As an adult recovering from the first of what would be countless burnouts and public failures myself, after college I'd set out to learn as much as possible about giftedness experience from a phenomenological perspective. Elements of the research and discourse around adult giftedness vibed really well, particularly around intensity, complexity of self-management and having in-built, untrained and untrainable traits that have no real place or stock in society except for categories of the exceptional (when traits are deemed positive) or peripheral (when they're deemed too weird or maladaptive).

The second category I look into was synesthesia, which while much more specific than giftedness, it at least focused on differences of perception, sensing and interpretation of the world within and around us rather than explicitly measurable attributes. This brought the focus away from centering around a persons' performance against another individual or against a population average; instead, it revolved around the constant navigation and dialogue that comes from experience, and this ranging from what resting baseline looks like, to what trauma looked like, and everything in between.

I had a lot of challenges using giftedness as a model, and the fact that it was so socially divisive didn't help. Synesthesia was never meant to compete as a overarching model, but it also had shortcomings in that perception and sensation aren't as tractable to build tools around. It offered less concrete ways to connect experience and behavior, and certainly less immediately.

The concept neurodiversity emerged into more public spaces over the last decade, and this was a much easier umbrella to move around under and use as a map. Functional issues, masking, disability, and an awareness of the nervous system and bodily differences took tools and techniques that were weaker in context for gifted folks and gave them new grounding and dimension. Over recent years as PDA emerged with a flood of voices suddenly articulating the realities of this condition -- my condition -- this was the final piece of the puzzle. The 'fit' of this condition and realization that there are people out there like me was the center of gravity missing in my personal model and it also filled a critical gap in the larger landscape of autism and neurodiversity at large. This realization has been really pivotal and I'm giving myself a few years to let it sink in.

During this time, I wanted to dedicate this space to the journey of reclaiming the visionary and everything I've learned from being on and supporting those on this path. I also want to reflect on the changes and learnings made along the way, and infuse some old tools and techniques with the myriad of perspectives gained over the last twelve years. This space will include talk around starting a business, but will be broadened to include visions and projects that color well outside the lines of what a traditional business is. The heart of it is, I think, self-liberation that comes with territory well-trod to adult PDAers: deprogramming from lifelong expectations and self-management strategies that 1) don't work, 2) are exhausting and punishing and 3) run counter to our genuine needs. Self-liberation is inherently creative, so my focus will be on providing a bushel of resources and approaches to try, with little or no direction. Lastly, I treasure the weird and divergent experiences that are born from our differences (even and especially the extreme ones). So as the title of Reclaiming the Visionary suggests, I'm going to give a little much needed reverence to the powerful but deeply unconventional experiences of our divergent minds, bodies and lives.